FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Thomas A. Tanghe, Assistant City Manager

City of Auburn Hills

Office: 248.370.9440

Facsimile: 248.370.9348

www.auburnhills.org

Auburn Hills Joins Bidding Network

Auburn Hills, Michigan, February 22, 2007 – Auburn Hills announced today that it is has joined the Michigan Inter-governmental Trade Network (MITN), an online system providing easy access by vendors to government bids. The official “go live” date was Wednesday, February 21st.

MITN was developed with the assistance of BidNet, an Albany, New York company that manages several purchasing websites across the country.

“The benefits to membership and active participation are numerous”, said Tom Tanghe, Assistant City Manager of Auburn Hills. “We spoke to our Oakland County neighbors who are members and learned of the number of efficiencies to be gained. Time is money as we all know, and the government purchasing process is far too time-consuming”, he added.

Auburn Hills has a decentralized purchasing system, which means that various employees have purchasing responsibilities for the departments in which they work. Select individuals participated in training as part of the City’s launch of the system. The one thing that now assists in creating a more consolidated purchasing effort and a streamlining of all departments is MITN and its formalized, yet very user-friendly format.

While there is no cost for vendors to register with MITN through BidNet, contractors and vendors can receive an e-mail notification that a participating member is interested in its services if they register and pay a fee. The cost for automatic e-mail notification to a vendor is $49.95 for one year, $79.95 for two years, and $99.95 for three years. “It’s a win-win from the standpoint that our current vendors will have access to the bids of every other member of the MITN system and Auburn Hills will have exposure to all the vendors who have been serving other Michigan communities who are on the system but may not have been working with us”, Tanghe said.

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Bidding Network (page 2)

Auburn Hills compiled a list of nearly 4,000 vendors with which it has done business, and all of these have received notification by the City that they need to become registered. There is no cost to the City for being a member and the City expects to cut down on a great deal of duplication of effort; including time, copying, advertising and the many other labor-intensive and cost-producing aspects of procurement.

Achieving the greatest efficiencies will also require changes to the City’s purchasing ordinance which will be recommended for amendments to the City Council within the next sixty days. “We have an opportunity to cut our advertising costs associated with the bid process by thousands of dollars per year”, said Tanghe. The City’s current purchasing regulations require that it advertise its bids in a newspaper, something that is no longer beneficial with an online purchasing process.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my colleague Jean Farris, Supervisor of Procurement for neighboring Rochester Hills for helping to walk me through this process and assist Auburn Hills with this important cooperative effort”, said Tanghe.

For additional information about the MITN system and how you can become a participating vendor, visit www.MITN.info or contact Tom Tanghe, Assistant City Manager at 248.370.9440.

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Additional information:

There are now 30 agencies with membership in MITN.

In Oakland County, they include:

Auburn Hills, Birmingham, Farmington, Farmington Hills, Madison Heights, Novi, Pontiac, Rochester Hills, Royal Oak, Southfield, Troy, Wixom and West Bloomfield.